This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

"Frozen Ground": young writer-director from New Zealand does a character study in a true crime docudrama set in Alaska in the 1980s

“Frozen Ground” is a somewhat stereotypical thriller, set in
Alaska, and the first feature film by Scott Walker. Nicholas Cage plays state policeman Jack
Holcomb, who has to work with an underage prostitute Cindy (Vanessa Hudgens) to
catch a serial killer Robert Hansen (John Cusack, in what seems a bit an
atypical role for him).

The film is based on a true case from the 1980s and is
written by the director, who probably saw the main writing challenge as
presenting a female character who does not at first inspire a rooting interest
to become critical to solving the case. Walker, who is from New Zealand, says that he
started this as a fiction project, and found out it was a true story, which
turned this into a research project. Walker says he was interested in a “victim’s
story” unfolding as a docudrama. (The
short where he explains his screenwriting process is called “Pen to Ink”.) Walker
worked with manual timelines very much as I have with my own novel manuscripts.

He found the police officer, who said he was doing his job
and was not a hero and didn’t want his real name used. He eventually did find Cindy.

One thing that is interesting to me is that Walker, while
wanting to focus on the victim(s), was not fixed at first in what project he
wanted to do, as I am. Walker says “this
is not a who-dunit”. You know who did it
at the beginning. His first draft was
180 pages (three hours), cut down to 100 minutes.

The pathology of Hansen becomes apparent, as sometimes he
says he doesn’t remember his crimes. The
film credits say he led authorities to 17 gravesites. The film says it is
dedicated to the victims. Hansen masqueraded as a family man but seemed to need
to look down on some women as less.

An early scene where a body is found by a sea inlet
resembles the opening of “Twin Peaks”. The film has a cold beauty (there is a perpetual twilight) outdoors, which moves indoors into bar and police station scenes where the environment looks a bit crude.

Lionsgate’s publicity site (Aug. 2013) is here. The film can be purchased through
YouTube for $12.99. I don’t recall
seeing YouTube purchases before.

Wikipedia attribution link for Anchorage from space. I visited Alaska once, in 1980, on a triangle trip with Hawaii on the old Brnaiff.

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